The Comprehensive Across the Timeways Preview

 

Amber Priestess

A 2 mana 1/4 is not great, as it can get value traded a bit too easily in the early game, but this minion is not meant to be played on turn 2. This is a prime target for the health-buffing cards in the Priest set, as the heal scales with its health. At its baseline, Priestess represents 8 effective life for 2 mana, which is already decent. A single health buff turns it into a 1/6 taunt that heals for 6, which is nuts against any aggressive deck.

We think this minion has potential to be included in a variety of Priest decks due to the strength of Disciple of the Dove and the neutral Portal Vanguard, as well as the popularity of Birdwatching. Even if we do not play a dedicated hand buffing Priest deck, it is likely that Priestess can soak some buffs in the average Hearthstone game and make a significant impact in the mid-game in aggressive matchups, while potentially turning into an even bigger heal card in the late game.

Score: 3

Cease to Exist

A much stronger version of Deadly Shot. Cease to Exist silences before it destroys a minion, making it a powerful removal tool against deathrattle minions. Its Rewind ability makes it more likely to hit our desired target, in case we are facing multiple enemy minions.

But despite its obvious strengths, Cease to Exist is a purely reactive card that is mostly strong in the late game, when removing a large threat for 3 mana becomes an efficient play that helps us swing the board. In the early game, killing one minion for 3 mana is hardly impressive. This is not a good card against aggressive decks.

Therefore, we think Cease to Exist is only a consideration for the most defensive-minded Priest decks. There are some powerful deathrattle minions in Standard, as well as a couple that are introduced in this expansion. It is a strong tech card against them. Can ruin an Egg Warlock’s day.

Score: 2

Disciple of the Dove

This minion resembles Paladin’s Alliance Bannerman. A 3 mana 2/2 that draws a minion and buffs our whole hand. Priest’s set in this expansion heavily leans into buffing the health of our minions, which makes Disciple of the Dove a core enabler for the whole package.

But Disciple of the Dove is not limited to a “Handbuff Priest”. It should be a good card in every type of Priest deck that does not specifically run Resuscitate. Card draw is extremely valuable in Priest. Minion tutoring even more so, as can be seen by the popularity of Birdwatching. Health buffing makes our minions harder to remove, which fits both defensive-minded decks just as well as proactive ones. Even slower Priest decks in current Standard run many minions as part of their core strategy.

We think Disciple of the Dove will walk on the same path as Alliance Bannerman, becoming one of the most highly played cards in its class, an auto inclusion in every deck unless they are limited by a deckbuilding restriction, such as Resuscitate.

Score: 4

Power Word: Barrier

This spell does not compare favourably with Disciple of the Dove. If we budget the health buff at 1 mana, we can see this clearly. A 2/2 that draws a minion is easily worth 2 mana. A single divine shield on a character is never worth 1 mana. We think Power Word: Barrier would not have been overpowered as a 1 mana spell.

This significantly limits the decks that want to use Barrier. They will have to value the health buff to the point it pays off for them to run an inefficient card. For this to happen, they need to heavily leverage hand buffing synergies and/or run a build with high minion density.

This pushes Power Word: Barrier to proactive Priest decks that run a full hand buffing package with Eternus and Divine Augur. Otherwise, we cannot see this card making it to constructed play. It needs to get carried.

Score: 2

Intertwined Fate

A value card that resembles Identity Theft, which was a popular (but overvalued) Control Priest card from Castle Nathria. The difference is that Intertwined Fate discovers a copy of a card from our deck rather than the opponent’s hand, making it a split effect between “stealing” and “digging”.

Discovering copies of cards from our deck is a good effect for control decks, as it offers us the chance to find multiple copies of our high value win conditions, fitting a grindy playstyle. The thief discover can also be strong in late game matchups but diminishes in value in faster matchups.

So even though Intertwined Fate is not an ideal draw in faster matchups, it should be a little better than Identity Theft in those situations. This makes it a better overall card unless thief synergies become highly important this expansion, which we do not expect.

Still, it is mostly a grindy card that we can only expect slow and defensive minded Priest decks to successfully utilize. We will be surprised if a deck like Protoss Priest runs it.

Score: 2

Cleansing Lightspawn

Much like Amber Priestess, Lightspawn’s battlecry scales with its health. The difference is that Lightspawn is less impressive with a single health buff and stronger with multiple health buffs. A 4 mana 2/5 that deals 5 lifesteal damage is comparable to a Glowstone Gyreworm. A second health buff turns it into an amazing swing card, which makes us believe that Lightspawn needs more support than Amber Priestess but has a higher ceiling.

Therefore, we suspect Lightspawn will require a deck to run more than just Birdwatching and Disciple of the Dove to be consistently useful, making it suitable for decks that lean heavily into the full package with Power Word: Barrier and Divine Augur.

This narrows down the audience and ties its chances of seeing competitive play to the success of the full package, but it will likely become a strong performer for the archetype.

Score: 2

Divine Augur

This minion is a slow payoff card for Priest’s hand buffing package. The game plan involves buffing the health of minions in our hand with cards like Disciple and Barrier and then equal their attack value with their buffed health. As an example, an Amber Priestess in our hand that was drawn by Disciple of the Dove and buffed with Power Word: Barrier will turn into an 8/8 following a Divine Augur!

This makes health buffing scale well for the Priest after the mid-game, turning even their smallest minions into must-kill targets. The cost is steep though. We need to go all-in on health buffing in the early game and we need to play a 5 mana 5/5 with no immediate impact, with the goal of swinging back on turn 6.

There might be some consistency issues with this game plan if we do not find our few health buffing cards in the early game, making Divine Augur potentially useless. The major upside of the card is that it makes a turn 6 Eternus a serious threat even on a bad draw.

This card is only meant for proactive decks with a pressure-based game plan. Its most compelling synergy comes with Zarimi, as it may revive a burst finisher in the archetype without the need to run a greedy top end. All we need to do is to buff Zarimi and another minion or two to play alongside it and we can deal well over 20 damage from hand in one turn.

Score: 2

Past Conflux

This location summons dragons to the board with heightened consistency at every use, but its expensive cost and weak initial charge is a dealbreaker for us. A random dragon that costs 5 or more may fool you into believing this has a strong chance of summoning a large threat, but the random pool is deceptively underwhelming, largely due to dragons being heavily battlecry-focused. There is a high percentage of dragons at these costs that possess a game-losing, weak body for the 7-mana investment.

The second charge of the location drastically improves the chances of a good outcome, as we get to discover the dragon, but we are on turn 9 at this point, so the opponent has a much better chance of cleanly dealing with the threat.

Priest does have an incentive to leverage locations in this expansion, but we think Elise and Medivh offer stronger build-around targets for that purpose. Conflux does not compare favorably.

Score: 1

Eternus

This dragon can be considered the most significant payoff to a health buffing package, as its ability to mind control enemy minions scales with its health. At its baseline, it looks exceptionally weak, but a single buff turns it into a mid-game menace, and multiple buffs turn it into an intimidating late-game swing turn that becomes extremely difficult to play around.

Mind control effects tend to be underestimated by players and prove to be more powerful than they initially seem. A good example is the popularity of Yogg after it was reworked to 9 mana, which occurred in a more powerful format compared to this one. Eternus is cheaper at the cost of versatility and the requirement of support.

It is important to note that we can reduce the health of large enemy minions by injuring them to enable an Eternus yoink. We do not always have to buff its health for it to be useful in the late game, so even an early Wakener of Souls is not safe from a 6/4 Eternus, for example.

This dragon is obviously fantastic in a Priest deck with a full handbuff package and makes us wonder if Zarimi Priest could come back with a bang, but it may also become a tool for control decks with a partial package. We can even copy Eternus with Cloud Serpent and completely cripple an opponent’s ability to play threats in the late game with multiple yoinks, though that might be slightly optimistic.

Score: 3

Medivh the Hallowed

The Medivh fabled package consists of three extremely expensive cards at 10 mana each, but each one becomes free if we control another. Medivh discounts Atiesh. Atiesh discounts Karazhan. Karazhan discounts Medivh. This means that it is enough to control one of them in play for the others to become free of charge if we have them both in hand.

Medivh’s battlecry is extremely powerful in every matchup, with the ability to win the game on the spot in any faster matchup, especially when combined with Karazhan. An unconditional board wipe that is effective against deathrattles, on top of summoning a 7/7 and two random 8-drops. That is the kind of play we are looking to cheat out early to win. Atiesh’s power requires more synergy and support, with its main upside being that it discounts Karazhan.

Priest has two primary ways to cheat out Medivh. The first is to discount Karazhan directly by building a Resuscitate deck with Busy Peon. An early game Peon with a turn 5 Resuscitate enables a turn 6 Karazhan/Medivh. The second is with Twilight Medium, which can either hit Medivh or Karazhan to drop one or both to the board on turn 6.

Medivh is generally incredible in Aviana Priest due to its Twilight Medium synergy, as the deck was desperate for high cost, high impact cards it can cheat out, and it can dig for the Medivh pieces with Overplanner and multiple tutor effects at its disposal. Beyond its high roll outcome on turn 6, Medivh makes it incredibly difficult for the opponent to successfully pressure the Priest once Aviana comes online.

This is a late game win condition that can blow out opponents early but lacks consistency and requires us to build an extremely greedy deck.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts

Across the Timeways Set Rank: 2nd

Overall Power Ranking: 5th

Priest has received a well-rounded set that should be able to impact both its early game and late game strategies in a positive way. We are confident that Priest will become a stronger class during Across the Timeways.

We believe Zarimi Priest is primed for a comeback in the last 4 months of its time in Standard. The handbuff package is a perfect fit for the archetype, making its minions extremely difficult to remove, while several important dragons can make a huge impact on its ability to both stabilize and pressure. Eternus is a crazy incentive to run a handbuff package.

In this proactive route that resembles its first iteration during Whizbang, Zarimi Priest can set up a burst combo with Divine Augur that may not represent a full OTK but can finish off opponents. Alternatively, Zarimi Priest has a more passive and simpler route through Murozond to full OTK opponents without much difficulty, much like the way it executed opponents with Naralex and Briarspawn Drakes during the Emerald Dream.

The fact the archetype has two promising routes makes it more likely to find success, as it can adjust from an early-game-oriented to a late-game-oriented deck with a change of builds, depending on what it has to face. We also think both Zarimi Priest iterations will hold wide appeal amongst players.

Aviana Priest has been struggling to reach a competitive level during Un’Goro but is receiving a massive boost to its late game thanks to Medivh and Chrono-Lord Deios. Medivh gives the deck another blow-out route through Twilight Medium, while Deios becomes an insane card post-Aviana with Incindius or Fyrakk. We may not need the inconsistent Champions of Azeroth anymore to close out games.

Another idea is to discount Karazhan with Busy Peon and Resuscitate. Whelp of the Bronze is a great 3-drop for a Resuscitate deck when we do not run Void Ray. The big advantage of this path is that we do not need to rely on Twilight Medium to swing the game. We have an incremental discount plan that is more consistent, albeit less explosive.

Can Priest finally find a competitive late game strategy? If it does, its popularity is expected to explode. Control Priest has always been an extremely attractive archetype for a large population of players, while Aviana Priest specifically is a deck that players have been desperate to make work for months.

The only thing standing before Priest and a larger presence in the format is the extent of its expected power surge.